Get Motivated Stay Motivated

During schooldays, admittedly there were the smartest students in the class, then the “not so smart” and those who are “struggling.”  Does this mean that they are not really smart and they have no future at all?  Does the smartest among them all will most likely to succeed?  Says who?  Being the smartest in class doesn’t guarantee that you will be the most successful among you.  It all depends on your determination in pursuing your dreams.

Being the top student might mean that you are only enthusiastic in your academic life and it stops there.  Those who are struggling may have not shown interest in their academics for they lack interest.  But after schooling, they have the greatest ambition in life which was ignited by their interest over that thing.  Although they have not been the top students in class, they are more likely to succeed because of their burning desire for that goal.  This desire for a goal gets them motivated and determined to reach it.  They will find ways on how to reach that goal and they are the ones who doesn’t quit easily.

Each one of us has our own place under the sun.  If you’re place isn’t in school, then it is outside and you just have to find it.  We may not excel in a certain field but surely we have a place in another.  If we were an underdog in school, it doesn’t mean that we will be an underdog for the rest of our lives.  We just have to pursue our goals and staying motivated helps us to succeed on it.

Each of us has our own strengths and weaknesses.  You may need to fill in those weaknesses you have which are necessary to achieve your dreams.  To become a winner, there are certain qualities that you must possess in order to cope with the environment you are facing and be able to survive and succeed.  Here are a some of qualities that you may lack and try to develop:

• Self-confidence - in pursuing your dreams, you need to be confident with the things that you do.  If you lack self-confidence, you’ll lack the belief of reaching your dreams.
• Be different - this is most useful with relation to business.  In a competent world, you need to be different to stand out.
• Think positive - never give up hopes easily and always see things positively.
• Courage - be courageous in pursuing your dreams because nothing will happen to you if you will stay a coward.  You will never know the outcome of something unless you try it.
• Be analytic - analytical thinking is important for you to know what went wrong or what you can do better.
• Be motivated - a person who is well-motivated has the energy and enthusiasm in pursuing his goal.
• Do not be a quitter - quitter never wins so don’t try to become one.

These are just a few of the characteristics you may need in pursuing your goal.  You must try to analyze your strength and weaknesses.  Then, take full advantage of your strengths and try to develop your weaknesses to become your strength

“A racehorse that consistently runs just a second faster than another horse is worth millions of dollars more. Be willing to give that effort that separates the winner from the one in second place. ”

If you can be the winner, why settle for being in the second place?  Being in the second place means that you have gone that far already and a little further would make you succeed being on the top place.  One may say that he doesn’t really intend to get to the top and would be contented to be just behind it.  But do you know what could have been the difference if it was you on the top?  Just as the quote has indicated, there is a million worth of difference being on the top.  So a little more effort to reach it would earn you a million, if not dollars, then a million worth of self-contentment maybe.

The whole point here is that, you have gone far to the top already for exerting so much effort and dedication on it, so why not make it to the fullest and be on the topmost of your goal.

One of the most important motivator is INTEREST. Your personal interest over your goal is a great factor to keep you motivated and succeed. Your burning desire over a thing or a goal keeps you focused and forget about the word failure. But if your goal is not something personal, but rather driven by other people, perhaps your parents or your family, you just force yourself to do it because of them and not because of your personal interest.  You are just like dragged from your seat to do a task you never meant to do.  These types of goal setting are less likely to succeed especially if it contradicts on your own goals.

In setting your goals, it is important to consider your own desire for that goal.  If other people drove you to that goal, it is ok as long as you have the desire for it as well.  Once you do not have the desire or the interest towards that goal, you tend to procrastinate and that goal will be kept hanging.  Especially if you have other goals in life, you will prioritize those that caught your interest.

Motivation makes your way easier to reach your goal.  You may feel it is very easy but if you analyze it, you have done a difficult task already, one which you couldn’t imagine yourself doing.  But because you are motivated, you didn’t feel the difficulty and the pressure.

Procrastination can sometimes do something good for us. Mostly on our emotional issues. It helps us get through from an emotional stress. Here is an inspiring story from a mom who had been through a lot in life that caused her to procrastinate:

January 1, 2007

An Unexpected Lesson About Procrastination

My second son was born a year and a half ago with hemifacial microsomia. That means half of his face is deformed. I’m not linking to a description of the birth defect, even though I know you will Google it. I’m not linking because the pictures are always the worst cases. He does not look like the pictures.

Still, I knew he was deformed the minute he came out. The nurse handed him to me, and his face looked uneven. I tried to tell myself that maybe it was because babies’ heads are scrunched right after vaginal birth.

His Apgar score was fine, but after a few hours, when my husband left the hospital to go home to sleep, I went nuts. Summoning every available professional — there were very few that late at night — to tell me a diagnosis.

In the morning, they did emergency tests on his hearing, because his ear was deformed, and on his breathing, because the inside of his mouth was deformed. Then someone came to do a kidney test because the kidney and ears develop at the same time during the pregnancy and when one is deformed the other often is, too.

The baby did not pass his hearing test and one kidney did not look right. The doctor told me that the kidney problem is common and he just won’t be able to play contact sports.

I must have looked really bad because social workers started streaming in. I don’t remember what I said, but my brother remembers my first phone call to him: I am crying so hard it takes five minutes for him to hear that the baby is deformed. Then, when I calm myself down enough, I tell my brother that my husband will die when he hears this so I have to hide it from him forever.

This is when my brother says, “I’m coming there.”

I say, “No. I don’t want you to see the baby.”

The world can publish ten thousand books about how parents love any child they get. And it’s true. But it’s also true that there’s a moment, a short moment, when you think you might die from the news.

Right after the phone call to my brother, my husband came back, and I said, “The baby is deformed.”

He said, “Are you kidding? You think I can’t see that? I know.”

We took the baby home two days later. We diagnosed him by looking at pictures on the Internet. We were absolutely stunned to see a whole population of children who had the same weird deformity.

I brought him to New York University’s Institute for Reconstructive Plastic Surgery. Hemifacial microsomia is very complicated because it can affect eyes, ears, nose, throat, heart and nervous system, all at once. Many specialists work together to come up with a plan for surgery. At my son’s doctor’s appointment, I presented him at the front of a room, with a social worker next to me, while fifteen doctors asked questions and examined him.

Here’s what happened: My son’s surgery was performed by one of the best teams in the world for hemifacial microsomia. All the doctors were incredibly compassionate. The support team of social workers, speech pathologists, and administrators always knew what my son and my family needed before we did, and they figured out how to get it. My son has a scar, and his face is a little uneven, but many people don’t even notice at first glace.

I told myself that I should write thank you notes. The team at NYU changed my son’s life, and helped my family at a time when we really, really needed it. That was six months ago. It’s been on my to-do list for six months. It moves up and down. A few times, when I’ve been really industrious, writing thank you notes has been at the very top, the only thing on the list, and I still didn’t do it.

Last week I admitted to myself that my son will probably need more surgery once his jaw grows to full size. And I thought, Oh my gosh, I had better write those thank you notes or we won’t get into NYU for the next round of surgery.

So tonight, I finally wrote them. There were a lot. Each note made me cry. I thought about how much people did for us. How kind they were. How fragile I was. How tiny my son was. Everything. Every sentence made me cry.

And I learned a bit about procrastination. I had been so angry at myself for waiting so long to write these thank you notes. But I do not procrastinate because I am lazy or unorganized. I am not those things. I procrastinated because I could not bring myself to think about the operation again. I was not emotionally capable of writing the notes until tonight. Sometimes procrastination is the best tool we have for taking care of ourselves.

source: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/01/01/my-clean-slate-for-2007/

Failure means not being able to meet your goals.  But how do you take failure in your life?  Having failed the first time doesn’t mean that you’ll never reach your goals.  It means that your exerted efforts are not enough which also means you need to work harder on it.   Just think that you haven’t failed, you just haven’t reached it yet.  Take a look back at where you did wrong or you did less effort.  At first, you may not identify it, not accepting the fact that you failed or that something went wrong.  But try to analyze it.  You could have lacked the motivation or belief that you will succeed.  Find the reason why you haven’t reached your goal yet or what keeps you long to achieve it.  Then you can start again from there and work through your goal.  Be cautious not to do the same mistakes again.

Just like in a maze, when you reach a dead end, what would you do?  Would you just stop and stay there?  Then what?  Just weep over there and waste the time of your life thinking of your failure?  Of course you shouldn’t do that!  Instead, take a walk back at your track.  Find the way where you have chosen the wrong choice.  Then,  you walk through it.  You might reach another dead end and you have to do the same.  Walk back and find the way until you reach the end of the maze or you have achieved your goal.

The word failure should not lose us hope.  It should even make us strive harder for our goals and give us courage.  Make it as a motivation factor for you.  Think that now that you have failed, you know better.  This is something like a “trial and error” thing.  You have tried one technique, finding out that it doesn’t work out, you try another one until you hit the right one.

One way of staying motivated of your goal is to remind yourself of your tasks.  I have come into this forum where it was suggested that you can write your goal in a piece of paper and post it somewhere in your room.  If possible, in a place in your house where you are always in.  Post it in a strategic place: in a place where you will easily spot it.  Another suggestion, post it anywhere, like in your room, you can post it from your wall, to the door and windows.

Actually, this won’t work for everyone.  This is only if you are comfortable with the strategy. If not, you can think of other ways on how to stay motivated with your goal.  It also depends on the goal you have.  If you want to manage your time, you can fix a daily schedule and write them down in a piece of paper.  But you don’t have to post it on the walls, or windows, but it will just serve as your guide for your schedule so that you’ll be in track with your time.

Teamwork is a great factor for achievement. This doesn’t only mean doing one’s job effectively and efficiently. By doing the simplest thing, you have also contributed to the success of an organization or any group you belong to. Being punctual, honest, patient, and the likes is a great contribution for a team.

The progress of a country does not only lie on the hands of its leaders but on its members also. If an individual abide by the law, even to the simplest of laws, like loitering, he has contributed a lot to the success of its country. Sometimes we may not know it but we have already helped our country or even other people. These simple things may be big to them but meant nothing to you. Listening to a friends vents is comforting to them, but for you, it was really nothing.

So this does not only apply to organizations, groups, or country. It also apply to one’s self. These simple things can help us achieve our goals. If we have a goal of losing weight, washing the dishes after meal is a bit of help. You won’t have to sit down which means that you won’t develop fats in your tummy. Plus, you move which could burn calories.

Sometimes, we think of big things too much. Which makes us forget to appreciate what simple things can do to us. Remember that big things come from small beginnings.

I came across to this quote as I was surfing the net:

“Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.”

Then, I realized how true the quote is. Earlier, I was having a dilemma on what time am I going to go because I am going to travel from home to the place where I work which would take me almost 4 hours. I wasn’t doing anything actually, just watching tv, lying in the sofa. I was choosing whether I am going to leave at 1:00 or 2:00 pm. I was considering for the bus schedule actually. Fortunately, I decided to pack my things up and left at 1:00 pm. When I arrived my friend just invited me to have dinner with her. That was when I realized that if I didn’t leave early, it could have really been stressful for me since I have work at 9:00 pm. By leaving early, I had time to rest from my trip, have fixed my things in my room at the boarding house, and to freshen up before going to dinner and to work. Since I wasn’t really doing anything important at home, I think it was a good decision to leave early.

So, the quote could really make us realize that a lot of opportunities will be missed just because of procrastination. Since I am a person who fixes things up before relaxing, procrastination should be out of my way.

Motivation is a piviotal concept in most theories of learning. It is closely related to arousal, attention, anxiety, and feedback/reinforcement. For example, a person needs to be motivated enough to pay attention while learning; anxiety can decrease our motivation to learn. Receiving a reward or feedback for an action usually increases the likelihood that the action will be repreated. Weiner (1990) points out that behavioral theories tended to focus on extrinsic motivation (i.e., rewards) while cognitive theories deal with intrinsic motivation (i.e., goals) .

In most forms of behaviorial theory, motivation was strictly a function of primary drives such as hunger, sex, sleep, or comfort. According to Hull’s drive reduction theory, learning reduces drives and therefore motivation is essential to learning. The degree of the learning achieved can be manipulated by the strength of the drive and its underlying motivation. In Tolman’s theory of purposive behaviorism, primary drives create internal states (i.e., wants or needs) that serve as secondary drives and represent instrinsic motivation.

source: http://tip.psychology.org/motivate.html

Well explained. Motivation plays a big role in our life.  It makes us stronger in facing the trials in our lives.